Still, it seems like a lot of hassle to make a useless hole. The engineering might also be a bit different, reducing the experimental value. Obviously the gravity is much lower. And, would the lack of umpteen tons of air sitting on top of the area make a difference?
But the Big Bang theory says there WAS a beginning to the Universe. Why does logical positivist or Zen Buddhist thought supercede the most commonly accepted theory of how the Universe came to be? What is your evidence, or argument, that the Universe has no beginning, beyond your saying so?
All of this "beginning of the universe" stuff, either scientific or creationist, is based on the premise that the universe as we know it exists at all. That is, in fact, only an assumption- see Descarte et al. The whole "I doubt therefor I think, I think therefor I am" bit is the only proof remains when you realize that there is no way to independantly verify the accuracy of your five senses.
I'm not very familiar with Zen Bhuddism, but as I (mis)understand it, it is based on the premise that there is no objective reality. In that case the very question "what is the beginning of the universe" is effectively meaningless.
I think Zen Buddism might even reject Decarte because of the causal "this therefor that" nature of his proof (also: what is "thought"? what is "existence"?). And if I were being taught by a Zen master he would probably give me a good thwack in the head for this whole post.
When scientists work on technology they hardly have affordability in mind. The chief objective is to first get the breakthrough, and then later versions that are affordable will follow.
Yep. We've seen it before. First the technology was so expensive it could only be seen in a couple of large Japanese cities, but just a few short years later everyone and his kid sister has a "gadget". Gots to keep up with the Joneses, if only for the sake of mutually assured destruction.
This post is made from 100% pure sleep deprivation.
Twenty-one #654995387: Slashdotters invent an infinite number of doomsday scenarios, all numbered "21". Having an infinite number of scenarios, the probability of "the twenty-one event" occuring becomes infinite. Like Wile E. Coyote's looking down and causing gravity to take effect, the realization of the certainty of a twenty-one event causes one to occur.
Twenty-one #655835601: The infinite density of the #21 causes all ideas to collapse into it, turning the rest of the world into a place just as mindless as slashdot.
The ROPOD (ROtating POlar Display) is a similar device, only the screen is a spinning disc rather than a rotating cylinder, making this one of the few displays to use a polar coordinate system.
These spinny things are all fine and dandy, but what I want is a clock that really is suspended in midair, i.e. a hologram.
Is there such a thing? And could we make one at home?
I don't understand how this could stop identity theft anyway. Hackers have been able to break into almost any system. They'll definetly break into this identity DNA database too.
Identity theft is a lot easier than you might think.
Every time you give someone your name and social social security number, or your credit card number and expiration, etc. they can impersonate you simply by giving that information to someone else. Even if you trust the organization you're giving the information too, do you trust the dumpster divers waiting outside?
Biometric identification isn't really going to be any better. For it to work you have to go to an office somewhere with the biometric hardware, and our world is becoming less and less of a go-to-their-office world. How do you think banking online is going to work? They aren't going to give you biometric ID hardware and hope nobody figures out some way to tamper with it (or maybe they will; it's no more stupid than the current situation). Most likely someone will come up with the bright idea of a "DNA identification number" that you can give over the telephone/internet which will work (or not work, as is the case) exactly the same as SSNs do now.
Guess what! Humans are a part of nature. We are not below it, despite what the religious
fundamnentalists of the aesthetic-environmental movement/religion would have you believe.
We are not above it, either. If we screw up Mars we screw up our own future.
If we're going to do it (and I think we should, someday) we need to get it right, or at least be able to weigh the risks. Right now we don't even know for certain what effect our civilization has had on Earth's atmosphere. And we know a hell of a lot less about Mars than we know about Earth. If we did do something to the atmosphere of Mars it is unlikely that we'd be able to figure out what the effect was.
So no, we don't have the right to mess with the martian atmosphere. Rights come with responsibilities, and if we can't accept those responsibilities we don't have the right.
From the Rijndael FAQ: Can't you give it another name ? (Propose it as a tweak !)
[snip]
I second the call for "bob"! (although I would've supported "peter", too)
Or you could just call it "AES". At least, you can now.:)
It will probably be called "AES". Just as people call it "DES" instead of "Lucifer" (although in that case they really are different algorithms).
I wonder if someone's patented putting text online. If not, I hereby patent this. All you people writing replies now owe me royalties.
Sorry, it's not enough to simply say "I hereby patent this". You have to actually file for a patent with the patent office, a process which costs money.
If I had the money, I would file for a patent on patents. With the current state of the patent office they would probably grant the patent, as long as the language used in the application was sufficiently technical and obscure.
Force all these patent fiends to buy licences from me. That would be cool. By denying licences to those patents I didn't like I could become a really powerful dictator. All the suits would ph33r me. I could make them beg and kneel and worship and send me gifts of computer hardware and women and stuff. Heh. That would be cool.
Did I mention how cool that would be? Someone send me money to file, 'cuz it would be cool.
Both systems have an uptime of 180 days now (reboot was done because of systems moving).
I like ReiserFS.
Heh, journalling filesystems are to handle the case of the system crashing. It doesn't sound like it's really done anything for you.:) But I suppose it's nice knowing that it's there.
It is. That would be my second choice, after Rijndael.
From what I've read, Twofish doesn't stand up do differential power analysis as well as Rijndael does, and is not quite as smartcard-friendly. Rijndael may also work better on future parallel computers. Rijndael is slightly smaller, faster, etc, etc. AFAICS Rijndael slightly edges out Twofish in nearly every category.
Twofish is American though, which may make a difference.
Serpent would be my third choice, but it's too slow compared to the others. Mars is too complex. RC6 is too dependant on rotations.
Its good that it is completely open, so there can be no patenting problems.
I can't remember the details, but whoever wins is not allowed to milk it even if they have patents. It's one of the stipulations for all AES candidates (but it only applies to the one that wins).
Of course, it's possible they might select more than one algorithm...
I have a hard time taking this guy too seriously. I'm sure he's bright and all, and may even have
some interesting things to say, but he pretty much turned me off in the early 90s when he was going on about how the net would (could?)bring about this "utopian" age.
Read the article. Apparently he's learned from his utopian-fantasy mistakes. The article questions the transhumanist theories/fantasies.
In a nutshell: Computers aren't going to change the world that radically because we don't know how to write the required software.
I'm kind of undecided on that one. Most of the extropian/transhumanist/singulatarian ideas assume strong AI. It's obviously possible to produce intelligence- we are living examples (Aren't we? Aren't we?!?!:). But there there is no clear path from what we have now to strong AI.
Unless I missed something while looking through the sources, they've just added more tools/libraries (openssl, openssh, etc.), not modified the filesystem code in the kernel.
That's right. FreeBSD is not just a kernel, it's a whole operating system! *ducks*;)
From the Crypto AG site.
To recapitulate: The rumours about Crypto AG originated from a former staff member of
Crypto AG who had to be dismissed.
What would you expect them to say? "Oh yeah, we're working with the NSA to invade your privacy. Sorry! Do call again!" Read some of the stuff that shows up on Google about them. It is a lot more than just one disgruntled employee. "Just a disgruntled ex-employee" is the standard defence of any company faced with a whistleblower.
Or, faction A defeats faction B, b/c they got the drop from information originally sourced from a Backdoored Appication or Operating System (BAOOS) that the NSA "leaked" to them.
This sort of stuff has been going on for a long time.
During the Iraq/Iran war the United States was backing Iraq (this was before Iraq invaded Kuwait). A Swiss company, "Crypto AG", was selling encryption hardware. Being Swiss they were not subject to U.S. export restrictions and there was an assumed neutrality. But, Crypto AG was in fact an NSA front. Iran bought encryption hardware from Crypto AG. The algorithms used had NSA backdoors. The NSA decrypted the Iranian communications and sent the info to Iraq.
Eventually the Iranians figured out that there was a backdoor, and they arrested/kidnapped a Crypto AG salesman. If they hadn't this info probably never would have gone public.
Interestingly enough, Crypto AG is still around. "High security solutions for governmental, business and military customers for networking, electronic data processing, telephony and radio applications." Heh.
As everyone knows, the GPL is viral, which means that it has to stay open. That's actually a good thing for companies. A lot of companies are unwilling to release source because (among other things) they're worried about other people walking off with it and making money off of their IP. The GPL prevents that.
GPL doesn't stop people from making money off other people's IP. It just stops from legally selling a closed source version. RedHat makes money selling GPL software written by other people. So does CheapBytes. You probably understand this already. In practice, stopping people from selling closed-source fruits of OSS labor seems to be enough.
However, I still think the BSD-style license is most likely to be favored by corporations.
BSD doesn't have the viral aspect to it. So, they can take BSD code, develop it, and then release the source or not. That "or not" is a nice option for corporations to have.
Witness MacOSX, the various BSD-based devices, etc. Compare to the Linux-based devices, where half the time people end up screaming "GPL violation" because the company wanted to make customizations and keep them closed. Want to bet they would have used BSD in those cases had they understood the BSD vs. GPL issue?
I think BSD is the license that will be favored in the corporate world. At least until the "we must protect our intellectual property" mindset really goes away. GPL is just ahead of its time.:)
I've never understood how bands could support the RIAA knowing how much money the RIAA gets and how little the bands get. I'm thinking Dr Dre and Metallica were paid by the RIAA to pretend like they don't like MP3 stuff.
<CONSPIRACY THEORY>
I think Metallica, Dre, et al. may just be pretending to hate MP3s. That way they can give MP3s a whole bunch of publicity and hasten the fall of the greedy RIAA, without actually supporting MP3s (which would draw the ire of The Ones Who Sign The Checks).
</CONSPIRACY THEORY>
Slashdot Mirror
With the Gameboy version too.
First of all, nukes are expensive, as is a trip to the moon. But...
The US Air Force did have plans to nuke the moon.
Still, it seems like a lot of hassle to make a useless hole. The engineering might also be a bit different, reducing the experimental value. Obviously the gravity is much lower. And, would the lack of umpteen tons of air sitting on top of the area make a difference?
All of this "beginning of the universe" stuff, either scientific or creationist, is based on the premise that the universe as we know it exists at all. That is, in fact, only an assumption- see Descarte et al. The whole "I doubt therefor I think, I think therefor I am" bit is the only proof remains when you realize that there is no way to independantly verify the accuracy of your five senses.
I'm not very familiar with Zen Bhuddism, but as I (mis)understand it, it is based on the premise that there is no objective reality. In that case the very question "what is the beginning of the universe" is effectively meaningless.
I think Zen Buddism might even reject Decarte because of the causal "this therefor that" nature of his proof (also: what is "thought"? what is "existence"?). And if I were being taught by a Zen master he would probably give me a good thwack in the head for this whole post.
Yep. We've seen it before. First the technology was so expensive it could only be seen in a couple of large Japanese cities, but just a few short years later everyone and his kid sister has a "gadget". Gots to keep up with the Joneses, if only for the sake of mutually assured destruction.
This post is made from 100% pure sleep deprivation.
Twenty-one #654995387: Slashdotters invent an infinite number of doomsday scenarios, all numbered "21". Having an infinite number of scenarios, the probability of "the twenty-one event" occuring becomes infinite. Like Wile E. Coyote's looking down and causing gravity to take effect, the realization of the certainty of a twenty-one event causes one to occur.
Twenty-one #655835601: The infinite density of the #21 causes all ideas to collapse into it, turning the rest of the world into a place just as mindless as slashdot.
Twenty-one #659995379: Just because.
These spinny things are all fine and dandy, but what I want is a clock that really is suspended in midair, i.e. a hologram.
Is there such a thing? And could we make one at home?
Identity theft is a lot easier than you might think.
Every time you give someone your name and social social security number, or your credit card number and expiration, etc. they can impersonate you simply by giving that information to someone else. Even if you trust the organization you're giving the information too, do you trust the dumpster divers waiting outside?
Biometric identification isn't really going to be any better. For it to work you have to go to an office somewhere with the biometric hardware, and our world is becoming less and less of a go-to-their-office world. How do you think banking online is going to work? They aren't going to give you biometric ID hardware and hope nobody figures out some way to tamper with it (or maybe they will; it's no more stupid than the current situation). Most likely someone will come up with the bright idea of a "DNA identification number" that you can give over the telephone/internet which will work (or not work, as is the case) exactly the same as SSNs do now.
They can just use the standard dot-com business model:
You americans really should switch to the metric system, like your neighbours to the north.
So how long, in hockey rinks, will the ISS be?
We are not above it, either. If we screw up Mars we screw up our own future.
If we're going to do it (and I think we should, someday) we need to get it right, or at least be able to weigh the risks. Right now we don't even know for certain what effect our civilization has had on Earth's atmosphere. And we know a hell of a lot less about Mars than we know about Earth. If we did do something to the atmosphere of Mars it is unlikely that we'd be able to figure out what the effect was.
So no, we don't have the right to mess with the martian atmosphere. Rights come with responsibilities, and if we can't accept those responsibilities we don't have the right.
Where do you think those fizzy bubbles come from? That's CO2 from the martian atmosphere!
BTW, while you yanks were aiming for the moon, we canucks were already setting up shop on mars, or yellowknife or something.
Speaking of "reality checks"...
I will see your apocalyptic literature, and raise you a few thousand thermonuclear warheads.
Do you still want to bet on this planet or are you gonna fold?
Or you could just call it "AES". At least, you can now. :)
It will probably be called "AES". Just as people call it "DES" instead of "Lucifer" (although in that case they really are different algorithms).
I told you so. :)
Sorry, it's not enough to simply say "I hereby patent this". You have to actually file for a patent with the patent office, a process which costs money.
If I had the money, I would file for a patent on patents. With the current state of the patent office they would probably grant the patent, as long as the language used in the application was sufficiently technical and obscure.
Force all these patent fiends to buy licences from me. That would be cool. By denying licences to those patents I didn't like I could become a really powerful dictator. All the suits would ph33r me. I could make them beg and kneel and worship and send me gifts of computer hardware and women and stuff. Heh. That would be cool.
Did I mention how cool that would be? Someone send me money to file, 'cuz it would be cool.
Heh, journalling filesystems are to handle the case of the system crashing. It doesn't sound like it's really done anything for you. :) But I suppose it's nice knowing that it's there.
It is. That would be my second choice, after Rijndael.
From what I've read, Twofish doesn't stand up do differential power analysis as well as Rijndael does, and is not quite as smartcard-friendly. Rijndael may also work better on future parallel computers. Rijndael is slightly smaller, faster, etc, etc. AFAICS Rijndael slightly edges out Twofish in nearly every category.
Twofish is American though, which may make a difference.
Serpent would be my third choice, but it's too slow compared to the others. Mars is too complex. RC6 is too dependant on rotations.
I can't remember the details, but whoever wins is not allowed to milk it even if they have patents. It's one of the stipulations for all AES candidates (but it only applies to the one that wins).
Of course, it's possible they might select more than one algorithm...
I'll bet it's Rijndael.
Any takers?
Read the article. Apparently he's learned from his utopian-fantasy mistakes. The article questions the transhumanist theories/fantasies.
In a nutshell: Computers aren't going to change the world that radically because we don't know how to write the required software.
I'm kind of undecided on that one. Most of the extropian/transhumanist/singulatarian ideas assume strong AI. It's obviously possible to produce intelligence- we are living examples (Aren't we? Aren't we?!?! :). But there there is no clear path from what we have now to strong AI.
I'll take the wait-and-see approach. :)
That's right. FreeBSD is not just a kernel, it's a whole operating system! *ducks* ;)
From the Crypto AG site. To recapitulate: The rumours about Crypto AG originated from a former staff member of Crypto AG who had to be dismissed.
What would you expect them to say? "Oh yeah, we're working with the NSA to invade your privacy. Sorry! Do call again!" Read some of the stuff that shows up on Google about them. It is a lot more than just one disgruntled employee. "Just a disgruntled ex-employee" is the standard defence of any company faced with a whistleblower.
This sort of stuff has been going on for a long time.
During the Iraq/Iran war the United States was backing Iraq (this was before Iraq invaded Kuwait). A Swiss company, "Crypto AG", was selling encryption hardware. Being Swiss they were not subject to U.S. export restrictions and there was an assumed neutrality. But, Crypto AG was in fact an NSA front. Iran bought encryption hardware from Crypto AG. The algorithms used had NSA backdoors. The NSA decrypted the Iranian communications and sent the info to Iraq.
Eventually the Iranians figured out that there was a backdoor, and they arrested/kidnapped a Crypto AG salesman. If they hadn't this info probably never would have gone public.
Interestingly enough, Crypto AG is still around. "High security solutions for governmental, business and military customers for networking, electronic data processing, telephony and radio applications." Heh.
You can find more info through a Google search on "crypto AG NSA".
Maybe by filling them with lead? :)
GPL doesn't stop people from making money off other people's IP. It just stops from legally selling a closed source version. RedHat makes money selling GPL software written by other people. So does CheapBytes. You probably understand this already. In practice, stopping people from selling closed-source fruits of OSS labor seems to be enough.
However, I still think the BSD-style license is most likely to be favored by corporations.
BSD doesn't have the viral aspect to it. So, they can take BSD code, develop it, and then release the source or not. That "or not" is a nice option for corporations to have.
Witness MacOSX, the various BSD-based devices, etc. Compare to the Linux-based devices, where half the time people end up screaming "GPL violation" because the company wanted to make customizations and keep them closed. Want to bet they would have used BSD in those cases had they understood the BSD vs. GPL issue?
I think BSD is the license that will be favored in the corporate world. At least until the "we must protect our intellectual property" mindset really goes away. GPL is just ahead of its time. :)
<CONSPIRACY THEORY>
I think Metallica, Dre, et al. may just be pretending to hate MP3s. That way they can give MP3s a whole bunch of publicity and hasten the fall of the greedy RIAA, without actually supporting MP3s (which would draw the ire of The Ones Who Sign The Checks).
</CONSPIRACY THEORY>
Or maybe they're just clueless. *shrug*